Morse code

I’ve gained a lot in my life learning Urdu and Hindi and encourage more people to learn. They are essentially the same language with different scripts, but unlike Arabic or Chinese they are Indo European languages and are much easier to learn. I grew up speaking farsi so maybe it was easier for me but if you work in IT knowing Hindi is indispensable.

It depends on your goals, and what cultures are you interested in.

I’m also fluent in Spanish and English (native Spanish though), and my third language of choice has always been between Chinese or Japanese. I like east asian culture, technology and many of their cultural exports. So it was an easy choice for me (easy the choice, languages… not so easy).

I just (I mean an hour ago) gave up on learning japanese via Duo Lingo. On and off for years but didn’t make considerable progress. I know about 20 hiragana symbols and a bit of vocabulary but I think I won’t ever grasp order of words or how they communicate without plurals or genders. It’s so different from germanic languages. I love the japanese culture but I just don’t have the time anymore.

I instead started spanish. After a few lessons Duo Lingo rated me as a super learner. Don’t know if it’s because they want to sell me a subscription but I really flew through the lessons (even when I had to type out the sentences). I’ll stay with it and will add dutch soon.

I’m gonna second French and Arabic for sheer amount of speakers (native or as secondary language), as well as geographic variety.

Other than that, I would’ve said that Russian would serve you well in the post-soviet sphere of influence, but that changed recently for obvious reasons. You very likely don’t want to travel to Russia, and her neighbors don’t look to kindly on Russian either, now. Will still do in a pinch

okay, and one joke answer: Japanese, you’ll find weebs to talk to in every country